American Hustle

On a U.S. Men's team featuring some of the biggest names in
lacrosse, everyone was talking about Matt Abbott coming out of
camp

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Matt Abbott isn't sure who coined the phrase, but remembers
first hearing it during his junior year at Syracuse. Teammates and
even some fans started calling him "Human Clear" for his ability to
singlehandedly navigate a turbulent sea of players to deliver the
ball from one end of the field to the other.

"You know, we had set clears, but it just seemed like when we
were out in transition, I'd somehow find my way back to the ball
and get the outlet pass," he said. "Then I could always just leg it
out."

Seven years later, Abbott no longer wears the orange of the
college team for which he, his father Tom (Syracuse '78) and
grandfather Larry (Syracuse '52) played, but he's still bringing
that do-everything mentality to the lacrosse field.

After helping Syracuse win back-to-back NCAA championships in
his junior and senior years, Abbott has spent five seasons with the
Chesapeake Bayhawks, who have won three Major League Lacrosse
championships in five years since his arrival. Now he's in the
running to fill the same role for the U.S. men's team at the 2014
Federation of International Lacrosse (FIL) World Championship this
summer in Denver.

Things like clearing and blunting opposing midfielders usually
don't make headlines. But on a team featuring some of the biggest
names in lacrosse, the name on everybody's lips coming out of
January's Champion Challenge was Matt Abbott. "No matter what the
criteria is, Matt Abbott does more for his team than any player I
have ever been around," Bayhawks coach Dave Cottle tweeted. "To
replace him, you need two guys."

ESPN broadcaster Quint Kessenich was even more effusive, calling
Abbott "the best all-around lacrosse player on the planet. Plain
and simple."

Team USA trimmed its roster from 50 to 30 after the US Lacrosse
event headlined by a nationally televised Blue vs. White scrimmage.
It wasn't that Abbott had some blowout offensive show to draw the
praise. He did score once, but it was the usual array of clearing,
defense and overall effective play that got everybody talking about
him.

Bayhawks teammates Dan Burns and Jeff Reynolds and the LXM Pro
Tour's Kyle Harrison joined Abbott as the players to advance in the
short-stick defensive midfield group. Besides Harrison, a former
Tewaaraton Award winner at Johns Hopkins who's trying to make this
U.S. team at a more specialized position, these players
traditionally toil in anonymity.

Just like his slightly more glamorized kin, the long-stick
midfielder, the shorty has to play airtight defense against another
team's top offensive horses, help on faceoff wings, capitalize on
potential turnovers by getting the ball off the ground and take
advantage of opportunities to push the ball the other way in
transition.

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For Team USA, that versatility will be put to the test against
teams like Canada — with a much-improved midfield rotation
headlined by reigning MLL MVP Kevin Crowley — and the
Iroquois Nationals.

"Having a 23-man limited roster creates a higher sense of
urgency to be able to keep guys that can do more than one thing,"
Team USA assistant Jeff Tambroni said. "If you can do one thing and
do it well, you make a case for yourself, but I don't know if
there's anybody out there at any position that can do more things
than Matt Abbott right now."

Cottle has plenty of familiarity with this group, having also
coached both Burns and Reynolds at Maryland. He rated Reynolds as
the best individual defender of the three, with Burns bringing
great energy and showing a keen ability for the slide and recovery
that the midfield-happy MLL requires. Harrison is the wild card of
the group.

"The same reason Team USA feels that [those players] are
valuable is the reason we feel they're valuable," Cottle said.
"They all bring something different, but they also understand each
other's strengths and weaknesses. And they understand the Canadian
players."

So how did Abbott become so well rounded, to the point where
he's getting the most hype on a roster filled with some of the
biggest names that the game has ever seen? A lot of it started back
with his high school career at Nottingham (N.Y.).

"We never had a lot of depth at Nottingham," Abbott said. "I was
more offensive-minded than I am now. We didn't really specialize
much. Everybody did everything, and that became my path to get on
the field at Syracuse too."

After scoring 212 points at Nottingham, Abbott followed in the
family footsteps to Syracuse — the only college he seriously
considered attending — and played in every game over his four
years there, earning first-team All-American honors as a senior in
2009.

Along the way, he picked up a great nickname and assisted one of
the craziest plays in NCAA championship history, the "Foxborough
Flip" of 2009.

Trailing Cornell by one goal with the final minute ticking away,
Syracuse tied the game on a circus-like sequence. After Kenny Nims
and Joel White managed to get the ball on the ground rising,
Stephen Keogh found Abbott with a pass near the restraining line.
Abbott got tied up by multiple Big Red players, but somehow managed
to float a pass over Roy Lang's head to a streaking Nims on the
crease. Nims scored the tying goal with 4.5 seconds left.

The Orange went on to win the game in overtime on Cody
Jamieson's goal.

"It was just one of those plays where a number of things
happened the right way for us," he said. "But it's one of those
things where if you hustle hard enough, you can create your own
luck. If we had a million tries to get that sequence again, we
probably couldn't, but I still watch it on YouTube and get goose
bumps every time."

Since joining the Bayhawks, Abbott has averaged about a point
per game, but he also has led Chesapeake in ground balls in three
of his four full seasons with team.

"He does the job of two or three men, and he's totally fine with
it being the unheralded things," Cottle said. "The team loves
that."

Working in finance and as a part-time assistant coach alongside
his brother Mike at Colgate, Abbott said he maintains that hustle
by staying on top of the running and fitness program put together
for Team USA by coach Jay Dyer.

Having been through the U.S. selection process four years ago
— he also made the training team in 2010 was not among the 23
players chosen to travel to Manchester, England — Abbott
knows how much it takes to get this far. He just hopes that his
Swiss army knife spectrum of skills is enough to get him one step
further.